The Lenovo ThinkPad 10 is a Windows tablet with a 10.1 inch, 1920 x 1200 pixel display, up to 4GB of RAM, up to 128GB of solid state storage, and an Intel Atom Z3795 quad-core processor.

Announced in May, the tablet should begin shipping in the next few weeks, and in the United States it sells for $599 and up.

While that makes it relatively expensive for a Windows tablet with a Bay Trail processor, it’s one of the few models with a full HD screen, the fastest Atom chip on the market, and in the US all models will ship standard with a Wacom digitizer and digital pen.

thinkpad 10_11

Lenovo will offer models without the digitizer in other markets.

As part of Lenovo’s business tablet family, the ThinkPad 10 has some premium features including options for 3G and 4G, optional TPM security, and a range of accessories including a desktop dock, a Quickshot cover (which fires up the camera app as soon as you fold down the flap hiding the camera), and several keyboard dock options.

While the tablet itself doesn’t have a space to store the digital pen when you’re not using it, the Quickshot cover has a little flap that you can slide the pen into, and the keyboard dock I got a chance to play with has a spring-loaded slot for storing the pen. Just push the pen in when you’re not using it, and press the pen again to pop it out of the dock.

The tablet doesn’t feel extraordinarily sturdy when you place it in the keyboard dock. It’s held loosely in place with magnets, and you can’t adjust the screen angle. But fold down the screen and snap it into the dock so that the keyboard acts like a screen protector, and it stays firmly in place.

The tablet weighs about 1.3 pounds, measures about a third of an inch thick, has an 8MP rear camera, 2MP front-facing camera, HDMI and USB  ports, a microSD card slot, and a 33Whr battery for up to 8 hours of use.

It feels pretty good in the hand, and while I didn’t spend a lot of time using the digital pen, it seemed pretty precise, allowing me to hover over menu items without touching the screen and perform other traditional Windows actions that can be difficult to accomplish on a Windows tablet when you’re only using your fingertips.

There are cheaper Windows tablets on the market, and more powerful options. But the Lenovo ThinkPad 10 strikes an interesting balance for folks looking for long battery life, a small package and precision input with a digital pen.

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25 replies on “Hands-on with the Lenovo ThinkPad 10 Windows tablet”

  1. A slow charging option via a microUSB port would have been nice when you don’t want to carry multiple chargers when traveling. At 7.5 W – 10 W, it should be fast enough. Especially for overnight charging. With the current system draw of most Bay Trail devices, 10 W should even charge your device while it’s in use (not under full CPU/GPU load of course).

  2. That trackpad is way too small. Not much better than the crappy optical trackpoint they had for the TPT2. Plus you already have the entire screen as a trackpad (minus the pointer). They should have put a rubber trackpoint on there to complement the touchscreen instead.

  3. I don’t really like that keyboard design because it can’t adjust to different angles. The tablet though seems pretty nice. It seems to me that this is the most full featured Atom tablet out right now.

  4. Quite a shame Lenovo took so long to get this to market. Intel’s 14 nm Core M (fanless Broadwell-Y) will be inside of 10″ and 12″ tablets before the end of this year. The 10″ Intel Llama Mountain tablet was ~1.2 lbs and only ~6.8 mm thick. Core M devices will be starting between $600 and $700 USD.

  5. Great product. Back in the days when I needed my machine to do Cad I wouldn’t imagine this handling all my needs, but with an external monitor and tethered to my phone, I can’t imagine a scenario where this wouldn’t suffice.

    Adjustable docking angle would be nice, but even that compromise seems understandable.

  6. “premium entry level” is this a new term? 🙂 Seriously though, it seems like a lot of products these days would fit into that category.

    Is Apple going to sue them for making a single-sided cover that snaps on magnetically? The little corner flap folding over to trigger the camera is a nice trick, but also kinda silly. It seems like they could have just made a small hole for the lens.

    Speaking of Apple, the little flimsy doors over the ports seem like something Apple would avoid. Unfortunately, Apple also avoids great features like a stylus.

  7. “with a Bay Trail processor, it’s one of the few models with a full HD screen, the fastest Atom chip on the market”

    I’m confused. Is Baytrail Atom or Celeron? In your review of the C200 you say that it’s Celeron. Here you say it’s Atom. Are there two different types of Baytrail?

    1. Intel just uses the names Celerons and Pentiums to rebrand their chips that specifically target the budget range for laptops/desktops…

      So the only question is what the chip is actually based on will now either be a Core processor or a ATOM processor…

      Bay Trail’s are all ATOMS but the Bay Trail M and D series specifically target the same budget laptop/desktop range and thus get rebranded either Celeron or Pentium… Just like the Ivy Bridge or Haswell based models…

      They do differ from the Bay Trail T series in that the M and D series support 4.5W and up to 10W TDP, adds support for SATA 2 (Bay Trail T only supports eMMC storage), adds support for DDR3L RAM up to 8GB (Bay Trail T maxes out at 4GB)… and don’t really need to support mobile features like connected standby and is why they can already offer 64bit support while the mobile versions we’re still waiting for that support…

      Bay Trail D can also be seen in server applications with up to 8 core configurations…

      While there’s also the Bay Trail I series, which is for industrial/embedded devices…

      Also, Merrifield and Moorefield (these are for phone SoCs) also use the same Silver Mont based CPU cores as Bay Trail but still use Imagination PowerVR based GPUs, while Bay Trail uses Intel’s own GMA…

      And Intel is also producing SoFIA, which is yet another ATOM based SoC but lower cost and with integrated Cellular modem…

      Along with Quark, which is a more stripped down version of the SoC that’s meant for the Internet of things type devices and similar basic usages that Intel wants to compete more directly with ARM but it’s not out yet…

      And if that wasn’t all confusing enough then there’s the updates that will start coming out either end of this year or early next year on through the end of next year…

  8. Finally a decent review.
    Please inform, if possible, Lenovo not to overprice the tablet in European union countries as the vendors here tend to do so.Also if possible inform them next time to make a cheap keyboard that attaches to the tablet like the keyboard of t100.
    Thanks again for the informative review.

    1. Tell your government to lower their fees on companies. Exchange rates aren’t the only factor. The people of Brazil have to pay $1700 USD for a PS4 due to the fees Sony has to pay. Companies don’t often sell their products at a loss without a way to make up for it.

  9. Of they come out with a keyboard dock with a trackpoint, more firm attaching mechanism and an adjustable angle then I’d get it with the 4G and Wacom options.

  10. Too bad they kept the same bad idea from the TPT2: non-attaching and non-adjustable angle keyboard dock.

    Can this be slow charged via USB (ie. 10 W)?

      1. The Track Point on the TPT2’s keyboard dock was never the real Track Point, just an optical mouse made to look like it… and people gave it bad reviews…

        Besides, the touch pad in this model’s keyboard dock is much more usable for most people… and it’s not like you’d ever replace a Thinkpad laptop with this tablet anyway…

        For charging, it has a dedicated charger port and a fast charger port in the dock area… You really wouldn’t want a USB charging system until they finally get the 100W USB specification as it can take way too long to charge over the present USB charger options and you’d usually can’t expect to use the device and charge it at the same time…

        The previous issue about powering drives with the USB port also remains… but the desktop docking station provides both USB 3.0 ports and power…

      2. You’d think Lenovo would have learned from the TPT2. People complained about the keyboard dock not being able to adjust its angle and doesn’t attach. They also complained about about the stupid optical trackpoint. Completely removing the trackpoint was not the solution.

        1. Ya, I played with a TPT2 during a vendor fair at work a while back and that optical trackpoint was almost just the combination of the worst features of a trackpad and a regular trackpoint. The dock just had a slit to prop the tablet. Lenovo didn’t seem to have listened to the complaints and didn’t improve the dock much. They even made it worse in some aspects.

  11. Really missed their chance here with the useless non adjustable ultrabook dock and lack of pen slot in the tablet.
    Still it has something going for it – the lack of any real wacom tablet competitors. Especially since this is practically the only 10″+ baytrail tablet with wacom other than an obscure, expensive fujitsu one.
    Looks like a surface pro 2 competitor if anything which is sad since the surface pro 3 has been launched and is quite frankly an awesome unrivalled windows tablet.

    1. The pen slot may be a thing of the past… it is more convenient but the thinner pens sacrifice hand holding comfort and a bit of actual functionality and accuracy…

      While the larger WACOM pens are too large for the thin and light tablet designs… So they traded off for the better pen versus keeping the slot from the previous TT2… Also, MS made the same choice for the Surface Pro 3 as it also doesn’t have a internal slot despite being a much larger tablet…

      Mind, they’re starting to put the pen holder clip on these pens now… So it may be simpler to just carry it like you would a regular pen… While they still provide a slot in the keyboard dock and a pen holder in the cover accessories as well…

      1. Still better to have a pen slot. You always have the option to use a larger pen if you want to but still have the convenience of one that always comes with you and is not easy to lose. Same goes with the surface pro line.
        I suppose though this setup is better than no slot at all. I am more disappointed with the actual laptop dock than the pen slot. I guess they are going for tablet first with this device which doesn’t suit me as I want a hybrid 1/2 1/2.

        1. Like I said, it’s more convenient but most users want a good pen first and convenience second… If they were going to sacrifice on functionality then it might as well be a capacitive Stylus instead of a WACOM…

          Remember, you’re paying a premium for a WACOM digitizer and people want their money’s worth… and it’s hard enough to convince consumers that the pen warrants a premium price because few people understand how much these components costs…

          While cheaper alternatives, like N-Trig, can make it even harder because those pens requires batteries and thus are much harder to make thin and small enough to fit in a slot that a tablet can accommodate…

          Not to mention thinner and lighter pens tend to wear out faster, means you still have to purchase an additional WACOM pen for any serious work and that adds to total costs, etc….

          That said, a basic stylus should probably be standard for all tablets at this point… It’s not like we need pressure sensitivity for everything but a little extra accuracy can go a long way versus touch only…

    1. Make sure it’s not the crappy optical one from the TPT2 then I’d own one.

  12. I paid about $600 on ebay for 128gb core i3 dell venue 11 pro. Plus $50 tax. Love it! WIsh it was a bit thinner though.

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